Want to Make People Aware of Your Brand? Run Social Media Contests

The best way to build word of mouth traffic and drive engagement about your brand is to run a social media contest via social networking sites. It not only engages consumers with the brand in an exciting and fun way, it even allows you to know a lot about your customers-their preferences, feedback and many more things, whichyou can use later for improving your business. The best part is, you do not need to spend much for launching a contest online.

Given below are some strategies, which you need to follow for launching and managing a contest on social networking sites.

Determine your contestâs marketing goal

Every social contest that you launch must have a particular marketing goal. Whatâs yours? Do you want to launch a contest to drive awareness of your products and service? To direct traffic to your site? To encourage new participants to engage with your social media channels? No matter what, it is essential for you to know your objectives beforehand because this goal is going to set your contest strategyâs tone.

Create your social media contest

You can launch different kinds of contest and be very creative while developing them. There are many creative ideas for launching social media contests successfully. You could invite visitors to take part in a video contest where the participants need to create a new ad thatâs related to your product/service, or that features them and their friends using your product in unusual situations. Or what about a big cash prize for the one participant who comes up with the best product invention idea related to your brand or industry?

By offering great prizes or digital stardom, you can attract a huge number of people towards the contest and therefore your brand. Moreover, allow the participants of the contest to vote for choosing the winner. This will keep your audience engaged and provide opportunities for them to interact with one another.

Make best use of social networking sites

Promote your social media contests on Facebook, Twitter, your corporate blog section and other social networking sites. Make sure your contests are easy to share. Embed âshare thisâ links on the contest sites, on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and all other channels where people may visit. Use asocial media tracking toolsto see which sites and people are sharing the contest that you launched. After checking it, make sure to promote it to those communities more heavily, with more accurate targeting based on your findings.

Donât drag the contest too long

People tend to lose interest in a social contest if the winner is not declared within four weeks. However, sometimes contests which involve inventing a new item may take longer to declare the winner. After announcing the winner, be sure to do take advantage of potential publicity with press releases and promoted posts to announce the winnerâs success. Use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to to promote the contest champion and encourage interaction from other followers and entrants. Check digital data analytics using your social monitoring tool and find out which sites and people are discussing your contestâs winner,then post comments on those sites to drive more interest about your winner, and your brand.

Assess the contest

The contest was launched to achieve a particular marketing objective, so, after the contest is over, you should assess the impact it had on your brand and whether your marketing objectives have been successfully met. Use a social monitoring tool to measure brand engagement, bottom-line sales, and much more. Find out how far you were able to make people aware of your brand, whether the traffic resulted in conversion, and so on.

Many brands have used these strategies and had great results running social media contests; what will your next competition be?

The best way to build word of mouth traffic and drive engagement about your brand is to run a social media contest via social networking sites. It not only engages consumers with the brand in an exciting and fun way, it even allows you to know a lot about your customers-their preferences, feedback and many more things, whichyou can use later for improving your business. The best part is, you do not need to spend much for launching a contest online.

Given below are some strategies, which you need to follow for launching and managing a contest on social networking sites.

Determine your contestâs marketing goal

Every social contest that you launch must have a particular marketing goal. Whatâs yours? Do you want to launch a contest to drive awareness of your products and service? To direct traffic to your site? To encourage new participants to engage with your social media channels? No matter what, it is essential for you to know your objectives beforehand because this goal is going to set your contest strategyâs tone.

Create your social media contest

You can launch different kinds of contest and be very creative while developing them. There are many creative ideas for launching social media contests successfully. You could invite visitors to take part in a video contest where the participants need to create a new ad thatâs related to your product/service, or that features them and their friends using your product in unusual situations. Or what about a big cash prize for the one participant who comes up with the best product invention idea related to your brand or industry?

By offering great prizes or digital stardom, you can attract a huge number of people towards the contest and therefore your brand. Moreover, allow the participants of the contest to vote for choosing the winner. This will keep your audience engaged and provide opportunities for them to interact with one another.

Make best use of social networking sites

Promote your social media contests on Facebook, Twitter, your corporate blog section and other social networking sites. Make sure your contests are easy to share. Embed âshare thisâ links on the contest sites, on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and all other channels where people may visit. Use asocial media tracking toolsto see which sites and people are sharing the contest that you launched. After checking it, make sure to promote it to those communities more heavily, with more accurate targeting based on your findings.

Donât drag the contest too long

People tend to lose interest in a social contest if the winner is not declared within four weeks. However, sometimes contests which involve inventing a new item may take longer to declare the winner. After announcing the winner, be sure to do take advantage of potential publicity with press releases and promoted posts to announce the winnerâs success. Use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to to promote the contest champion and encourage interaction from other followers and entrants. Check digital data analytics using your social monitoring tool and find out which sites and people are discussing your contestâs winner,then post comments on those sites to drive more interest about your winner, and your brand.

Assess the contest

The contest was launched to achieve a particular marketing objective, so, after the contest is over, you should assess the impact it had on your brand and whether your marketing objectives have been successfully met. Use a social monitoring tool to measure brand engagement, bottom-line sales, and much more. Find out how far you were able to make people aware of your brand, whether the traffic resulted in conversion, and so on.

Many brands have used these strategies and had great results running social media contests; what will your next competition be?